Tag: motherhood

  Stupid Things People Say After a Miscarriage

Gretchen Corsillo

Just be glad you can get pregnant, they say. Just be glad it happened early before you got too attached. Just be glad your body took care of it and you didn’t need a D&C. Just be glad you don’t live in a state that would treat you as a Read more

Gretchen Corsillo

Gretchen Corsillo is a librarian and writer from the greater NYC area. She holds a B.A. in Literature with a concentration in Creative Writing from Ramapo College and a Masters in Library & Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Gretchen is the author of a bimonthly column for Public Libraries Magazine, and her work has also appeared in Salon and the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Blog. She is currently working on a novel. Learn more about her at gretchenkaser.com.

Letter to My Frozen Embryos

Rebecca Lee

I’m sorry I left you there waiting in suspended animation your crystal cradles safely ensconced (or so I pray) in stainless steel under blankets of liquid nitrogen 2 XY + 3 double-X I tallied your perfect chromosomes 46 times just to be sure We lost so many others before Day Read more

Rebecca Lee

Rebecca Lee is a public interest lawyer by day and writer of poetry and prose by night. A queer writer of color, she is a graduate of Yale College and UC Berkeley School of Law, where she was Senior Articles Editor of the California Law Review and co-Editor-in-Chief of the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice. Her poetry is forthcoming in Dispatches from Quarantine. She lives in San Francisco with her fiancé and their Goldendoodle, Justice.

Strangers at Birth

Cate Carlyle

My mother wasn’t much of one. If you put aside the fact that she abandoned me, in the winter, less than twenty-four hours after I entered the world, then the note she left propped on my thin yellow cotton blanket said it all: Take her. I can’t do this. I Read more

Cate Carlyle

Cate Carlyle is a librarian and the author of two young adult novels and a library reference book. Her short story “The Brothers” was shortlisted in the WFNS Nova Writes competition. Cate lives in Nova Scotia with her partner and supportive first-reader Bruce and their fur baby, Zoey.

Loupe

Jane Ehrenfeld

Sometimes I say out loud to no one, “I am so tired.” Sometimes I stop in the supermarket aisle, and press my hand hard to my heart, to blunt the ache. My mother often sighed, out of nowhere, long and loud. I don’t think she meant to. I know the Read more

Jane Ehrenfeld

Jane is an educator, lawyer, writer, mediator, and single mom, among other things. She has published nonfiction essays in The Washington Post, Quartz, and The Huffington Post; satirical essays in McSweeney's Internet Tendency and Slackjaw; and works of poetry and short fiction in Prometheus Dreaming, The Dillydoun Review, and Beyond Words.

I can press my womanhood into the void

Elisabeth Horan

Ghost imprint in the wall holds a hand shape Small boy presses into brick and mortar to disappear Invisibly thin sucking in his air – forgets to release an exhale No noise invisible boy becomes fresh paint As he dries on the breath of someone who should not— have touched Read more

Elisabeth Horan

Elisabeth Horan is a poet mother student lover of kind people and animals, homesteading in Vermont with her tolerant partner and two young sons. She writes to survive and survives to write - We are all battling something. Let's support each other. Elisabeth enjoys riding horses and caring for her cats, chickens, goats and children (not necessarily in that order). She teaches at River Valley Community College in New Hampshire.

The Truths We Keep Hidden

Sara Ohlin

Barefoot, I stood on the edge of the bluff, leaning out towards the great Pacific Ocean. The wind – dry and hot against my face – tethered me to the land. I stood in awe, surrounded by the beauty of the madrone tree. A sacred tree, revered for the strength Read more

Sara Ohlin

Sara Ohlin lives and writes in Bangor, Maine. Her essays can be found at Anderbo.com (as Sara Mitchell), Trillium Literary Journal, Mothers Always Write, The Good Mother Project and the anthology, Are We Feeling Better Yet? Women Speak About Health Care in America. She’s a contributor to Her View from Home and currently writes about life, food, grief, and motherhood at www.lemonsandroses.com

Mothers Intuition

Jesse Albatrosov

It’s the feeling of afternoon storms rolling in pale skies dimpled with stretch marks, lights dim as the rooms of stone castles in fantasies, smoke lingering from candles dragged gingerly through narrow halls. You can taste the moisture as it moves, tentative cool, dewy probes enveloping your skin and swallowing Read more

Jesse Albatrosov

Jesse is an emerging poet living and writing in the Central Florida area, with her husband and five children. She moonlights as a seamstress for her Etsy shop and is currently working toward her Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and English with a concentration on Poetry. Her work is published or forthcoming in THAT Literary Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Mothers Always Write, Press 53's Prime Number Magazine, Streetlight Magazine and others. You can find her online at www.jessealbatrosov.com or on social media.

The Quickening

Jesse Albatrosov

My favorite part of pregnancy was the idea of aliens inside me— limbs prodding beneath layers of muscles parted, tissues stacked tucking essential human elements of me and them together so we could feed off of each other symbiotically. I loved how they teased the outside world with impressions from Read more

Jesse Albatrosov

Jesse is an emerging poet living and writing in the Central Florida area, with her husband and five children. She moonlights as a seamstress for her Etsy shop and is currently working toward her Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and English with a concentration on Poetry. Her work is published or forthcoming in THAT Literary Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Mothers Always Write, Press 53's Prime Number Magazine, Streetlight Magazine and others. You can find her online at www.jessealbatrosov.com or on social media.